The first true democratic contest Egypt has witnessed following the January 25 revolution has ended with the Islamists leading the electoral scene, having won the majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament, and the decline of a divided liberal trend to the number three position with scant seats in that house. The transition process now enters a critical phase in which the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) must accede its power and authority to the elected body in preparation for the handover to civilian rule in the coming days.
Now the more complicated and significant struggle begins – building democratic institutions, the cornerstone for any modern state governed by constitutional legitimacy. The electoral contest made it clear that one need look no further than the performance of the so-called secular trend (liberals, leftists and centrists) to see that they hadn’t realized the significance of this component of the game, and that they are not yet prepared to be key players.
At the conclusion of the elections for the Peoples’ Assembly, the secular trend as a whole secured a share no greater than 20%. Such a result seems natural, to a certain extent. Following decades of marginalization of liberals—the monopoly of real power held by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the revolving door accorded the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leadership of crackdown or prison followed by occasional opportunities for governance—we can hardly expect the non-religious trends to display anything like political savvy in dealing with either ‘the street’ or the current ruling SCAF.
A more important question revolves around the extent to which the liberals can refashion themselves and return to the political arena as a vital force in what remains of this transitional period and the parliamentary elections to follow.
The reality is that the lay of the land for the liberal trend is not promising, despite the trend’s range and diversity prior to the revolution. The revolution brought with it the creation of scores of new parties, most of them aligning with the social liberal trend. The majority of these are personality-driven, rather than true party apparatuses with populist bases in the governorates.
From here on, the liberal trend must immediately rebuild itself on three bases:
First, there is the ideological pillar. Thus far, the liberal trend has failed to work to capacity to formulate a notion of liberalism that conforms to the particularities of this society and its cultural heritage. The stereotypical image most Egyptians have of liberalism today is that it is a Euro-American construct, keen to disassociate itself from religion, and committed to the notion of absolute freedom with no societal restraints.
What’s interesting is that the thought process associated with most of Egypt’s liberals hardly differs from the tenets of moderate, centrist Islam, which stresses rule of law founded on a division of authorities, respect for all religious minorities, women’s rights and so on. These are the beliefs of the majority of Egyptian Muslims and Copts, so laying out this ideology in a way that speaks to the hearts and minds of Egyptians must be the first step in taking the liberals from a ‘trend’ to an actual force with which to contend.
The second pillar is organizational building. Here, I don’t solely mean the establishment of a strong party, but the creation of a national project with a clear agenda for rebuilding Egypt. The stronger liberal parties that have resources, material and media-relations—such as the Wafd and the Free Egyptians—should be the ones to spearhead this initiative using all their means to assist in publicizing it across the country.
The third and most important component is establishing a popular base. Advertising campaigns during elections won’t suffice. In a country with rates of poverty exceeding 60% and in which illiteracy tops 40%, voters’ expectations of their parliamentarians and their presidential candidates run high. This might explain how Salafists managed to secure significant portions of the rural vote by assuring voters of admittance to heaven if they voted for them.
Building the base has to begin immediately through development projects, poverty and illiteracy reduction campaigns, in keeping with the ideological project previously mentioned, insisting that liberalism can conform to every society and that its aim is the prosperity of the individual and ensuring his or her freedom in the framework of democratic rule of law. These ventures will be actualized either by individual party branches or civil society groups that have received financial or technical aid. This is how the liberal trend – the Egyptian version – will come to every house and touch each citizen in one way or another.
In the short term, following its parliamentary drubbing, the liberal trend still has a chance to play a role in this transitional period. In the post-election phase, we can expect three potential scenarios for the liberals:
The first is pursuing a politics which joins pragmatism with preservation of revolutionary principles. Such an idea would best be executed by improving relations with the SCAF and entering into alliance with the MB in parliament with a view to avoiding being marginalized in the constitution writing process and standing in the way of the MB and Salafists forging a unified Islamic front. Such a marriage of convenience could dissolve just as easily as did alliances with the MB during the elections, however.
Second, there’s the possibility of a non-religious, independent ‘super coalition,’ which, such as it is, would only account for 25 to 30 percent of total seats, leaving the bloc just shy of the ‘filibustering third.’ This seems unlikely, however, as the Wafd refuses to enter into exclusive alliances with liberals, lest they be cast as ‘unbelieving secularists’ by ultraconservative Islamists.
The third option is that the liberals go it alone, as they are currently doing. This is the liberal tendency – to wait out what appears to be a dark transitional period, threatening to take the country back decades, pushing the regeneration project off to the long term.
The liberals need to realize that Egypt has entered a new phase, which doesn’t permit the luxury of watching on the sidelines of the ballot box, insisting on maintaining revolutionary principles. The aims of the revolution must come through compromises made in legitimate, elected constitutional bodies like parliament and the presidency.
Now the more complicated and significant struggle begins – building democratic institutions, the cornerstone for any modern state governed by constitutional legitimacy. The electoral contest made it clear that one need look no further than the performance of the so-called secular trend (liberals, leftists and centrists) to see that they hadn’t realized the significance of this component of the game, and that they are not yet prepared to be key players.
At the conclusion of the elections for the Peoples’ Assembly, the secular trend as a whole secured a share no greater than 20%. Such a result seems natural, to a certain extent. Following decades of marginalization of liberals—the monopoly of real power held by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the revolving door accorded the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leadership of crackdown or prison followed by occasional opportunities for governance—we can hardly expect the non-religious trends to display anything like political savvy in dealing with either ‘the street’ or the current ruling SCAF.
A more important question revolves around the extent to which the liberals can refashion themselves and return to the political arena as a vital force in what remains of this transitional period and the parliamentary elections to follow.
The reality is that the lay of the land for the liberal trend is not promising, despite the trend’s range and diversity prior to the revolution. The revolution brought with it the creation of scores of new parties, most of them aligning with the social liberal trend. The majority of these are personality-driven, rather than true party apparatuses with populist bases in the governorates.
From here on, the liberal trend must immediately rebuild itself on three bases:
First, there is the ideological pillar. Thus far, the liberal trend has failed to work to capacity to formulate a notion of liberalism that conforms to the particularities of this society and its cultural heritage. The stereotypical image most Egyptians have of liberalism today is that it is a Euro-American construct, keen to disassociate itself from religion, and committed to the notion of absolute freedom with no societal restraints.
What’s interesting is that the thought process associated with most of Egypt’s liberals hardly differs from the tenets of moderate, centrist Islam, which stresses rule of law founded on a division of authorities, respect for all religious minorities, women’s rights and so on. These are the beliefs of the majority of Egyptian Muslims and Copts, so laying out this ideology in a way that speaks to the hearts and minds of Egyptians must be the first step in taking the liberals from a ‘trend’ to an actual force with which to contend.
The second pillar is organizational building. Here, I don’t solely mean the establishment of a strong party, but the creation of a national project with a clear agenda for rebuilding Egypt. The stronger liberal parties that have resources, material and media-relations—such as the Wafd and the Free Egyptians—should be the ones to spearhead this initiative using all their means to assist in publicizing it across the country.
The third and most important component is establishing a popular base. Advertising campaigns during elections won’t suffice. In a country with rates of poverty exceeding 60% and in which illiteracy tops 40%, voters’ expectations of their parliamentarians and their presidential candidates run high. This might explain how Salafists managed to secure significant portions of the rural vote by assuring voters of admittance to heaven if they voted for them.
Building the base has to begin immediately through development projects, poverty and illiteracy reduction campaigns, in keeping with the ideological project previously mentioned, insisting that liberalism can conform to every society and that its aim is the prosperity of the individual and ensuring his or her freedom in the framework of democratic rule of law. These ventures will be actualized either by individual party branches or civil society groups that have received financial or technical aid. This is how the liberal trend – the Egyptian version – will come to every house and touch each citizen in one way or another.
In the short term, following its parliamentary drubbing, the liberal trend still has a chance to play a role in this transitional period. In the post-election phase, we can expect three potential scenarios for the liberals:
The first is pursuing a politics which joins pragmatism with preservation of revolutionary principles. Such an idea would best be executed by improving relations with the SCAF and entering into alliance with the MB in parliament with a view to avoiding being marginalized in the constitution writing process and standing in the way of the MB and Salafists forging a unified Islamic front. Such a marriage of convenience could dissolve just as easily as did alliances with the MB during the elections, however.
Second, there’s the possibility of a non-religious, independent ‘super coalition,’ which, such as it is, would only account for 25 to 30 percent of total seats, leaving the bloc just shy of the ‘filibustering third.’ This seems unlikely, however, as the Wafd refuses to enter into exclusive alliances with liberals, lest they be cast as ‘unbelieving secularists’ by ultraconservative Islamists.
The third option is that the liberals go it alone, as they are currently doing. This is the liberal tendency – to wait out what appears to be a dark transitional period, threatening to take the country back decades, pushing the regeneration project off to the long term.
The liberals need to realize that Egypt has entered a new phase, which doesn’t permit the luxury of watching on the sidelines of the ballot box, insisting on maintaining revolutionary principles. The aims of the revolution must come through compromises made in legitimate, elected constitutional bodies like parliament and the presidency.
First, I’d like to thank the author for this excellent article, which gets to the crux of the dilemma we liberals face in the wake of a heavy-handed, sixty year-long effort to distort the image of liberalism in Egypt. Beyond the points the author makes, as I see it, there is a societal problem as well which is that Egyptian civilization, in its long and venerable history has always valued notions of communal justice over individual freedoms (hence, the perpetual search for the ‘benevolent dictator’). For more on this, please see my article on the totalitarian state at: http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=287822
Liberal parties need to put forward a program that posits solutions to real-life problems and should strive to define the terms ‘liberalism’ and ‘secularism’ in ways to which Egyptians can relate. Allow me to make a start by suggesting that liberalism should be about the creation of a healthy space which permits dialogue from all factions of society without the oversight of any one group, not in the name of any set of revered principles or religious reference. Each citizen may participate in the dialogue on an equal footing, each opinion has its rightful place at the table and may be rejected or amended without previous oversight. All of this can be summed up in three points:
1) Societally, liberalism is about establishing an environment conducive to dialogue.
2) Politically, liberalism is the ideology of no ideology.
3) Economically, liberalism is about protection of the small enterprise from monopolies, big business or global capital.
As it currently stands, our society remains fixated on presenting ideas in the framework of past-focused, religious, or nationalist ideologies. One of the central requirements of a new scheme is that it be forward thinking, not relying on the past. To realize such a vision we need institutes, organizations, and scholars to advance studies in this future-oriented way.
This is the general environment and the framework within which language should be couched. The details bring us to the notion of secularism. If the ideological project lies not in nationalism or religion, but in the competing interests of all strata of society, then the ballot box should be that society’s sole arbiter. The process of the vote establishes the separation of religious organizations from the political decision-making process, because those organizations should not be granted an electoral voice. The citizen is the sole possessor of this voice – this is the essence of ‘secularism’ which we see as appropriate for Egypt today.
In this framework, however, each citizen may vote his or her conscience, according to Islamic, Christian or other ideological principles – that is to say here, he may maintain his ‘non-secularism’ – and secularism will no longer be cast as anti-religion, as it has been in the past. The majority rules, but the minority, in spite of its divergences with the majority, must be heard, given that the tables could turn in the future. This is what I mean when I speak of differentiating between individual secularism and state secularism.
The fundamental point here is that what was previously sacred, loses its ‘sanctity’ when the people consent to a vote absent the impositions of preachers. This is my two cents on how best to situate liberalism for Egyptian society.
I differ with you on the future scenarios you put forward in your piece; I believe that an alliance with the Brotherhood would spell a total loss of credibility for liberals. The way to spread liberal thought in Egypt, it seems to me, is via alliances with the left and independents, being a consolidated presence on the streets, exposing the truth of political Islam, and offering alternative visions to solve real problems on the ground.